I know parts of the AF Academy have been evac'ed, and they may be doing a crash training program with troops at Fort Carson.

Anyone on here in Colorado?

Oh yeah, and it's been burning for two weeks, but The One will bestow his presence on Friday.

I can see this as a theme for protesters, with variations on "Heal the planet by stopping this fire!"

Of course, since the combustion in question powers neither the generation of electricity nor the vehicles that move both people and stuff from Point A to Point B, fighting it doesn't address Our Nero Zero's apparent desire to sacrifice our nation's economy on the altar of AGW.

American parachutists...devils in baggy pants...are less than 100 meters from my outpost line. I can't sleep at night; they pop up from nowhere and we never know when or how they will strike next. Seems like the black-hearted devils are everywhere....

The first picture is really striking to me - how it looks like the 'greenbelt' (woodline) served almost like a fuze to light off the houses on either side of it. The smaller (landscaper planted) trees in the front yards look totally untouched.

We live in Colorado, and fortunately the only effects we have seen are a film of ashy mid on anything outside, nice blood-red sunsets, and an early morning asthma attack that hit my wife when a smoke cloud shifted our way.

A friend of ours lost his large, beautiful house in the Lower North Fork fire a few months ago. They had literally about a half-hour to evacuate a few belongings and their pets, including two horses. Everything else, including a room full of mementos from a long and storied career in the USAF and defense industry, was lost.

Lest anyone think that this just happens in the forested mountainous regions, look up the Last Chance fire, which burned about 48,000 acres out on the plains a few weeks ago.

My wife and I are supposed to go on a short trip next week to Grand Junction, CO and Moab, UT. However, those plans are in jeopardy due to a fire near GJT that had I-70 shut down for a while today.

I've often thought that a good invention that would be useful in areas like this would be a system of hidden water lines running along the roofline, gutters and perimeter of the house with spray nozzles on it. Up close they might look like small lightning rods sticking up. The fires swoop in, as you evacuate you turn the pump system on, and the water starts spraying the roof, walls and immediate surrounding area of your home. By the time the fire gets to the house, everything is soaked and the water continues to spray as the fire rages all around.

You would probably want a cistern and generator to go with this, as city water and electricity would probably be down during a fire. But for the Prep-minded this would be S.O.P.

An unattended generator should be able to run long enough; when these fires race through they don't really last that long. If the structure catches fire, sure it will last a while; but if you can prevent it just for a few hours the fires move on and everything around that can burn, has burned.

You could incorporate these pipes into the structure when you build the building, or even retrofit the pipes on the outside if the climate is hot.

I assume you're implying a pump to go with your cistern and generator.

One big problem might be the HOA. I'm not a plumber, but I'd guess that even the smallest available metal piping is cosiderably larger than lightning rods. Now, put up a solar water heating array and disguise the piping as part of that, maybe...

But there's still the gamble that the fuel supply for the genset won't run out in the time between when you evac and when (if) the fire arrives.

I'm sure a way could be devised to almost completely hide the nozzles.

And unless at almost gunpoint, I would never ever live under any HOA, unless I am the absolute dictator-for-life of said HOA. But yeah, I do understand that many people live in these mini-gulag HOAs; sucks to be them, hope they enjoy their fires.

Fuel (and cistern) could be scaled up to whatever you want to prep for. Many of these McMansions on expensive real estate look like they could afford the scratch to pay for my HouseSaverSystem (tm).

Maybe turn the system on when you evac, the system gives a light mist to everything so everything is soaked; then when an outside thermostat is triggered by the actual fire getting close, the system then kicks into high gear spraying sheets of water over everything at a higher volume.

I've been thinking in terms of a masonry exterior and metal roof. Or even a terracotta roof.

I think masonry/adobe/rammed earth walls combined with a tile/terracotta or metal roof and roll-down metal shutters for the windows would probably allow a house to withstand the radiant heat long enough for the fire to move past it.

Where you build your home can be as much of a fire deterrent as the materials it's made of. Take a look at the following photo library, and give special attention to pictures 41 and 44.

The house in #41 is built on a rock outcropping with very few trees around it.

The house in #44 has a metal roof.

The biggest issue I see with a pump and water system like you're talking about is that for places like Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, we're in an extremely arid area where significant precipitation for a cistern isn't always guaranteed. But in an area with lots of water, fogger-type nozzles that can put out a huge volume of water would be a great way to keep a house protected.

I think masonry/adobe/rammed earth walls combined with a tile/terracotta or metal roof and roll-down metal shutters for the windows would probably allow a house to withstand the radiant heat long enough for the fire to move past it.

Be an interesting test to run.

One of my concerns with the monolithic dome construction is that the closed cell foam is on the outside, concrete on the inside. This:

You could always shotcrete the outside of one of those domes. I seem to remember seeing some that are not foam on the outside, but now I can't remember if thats because they are not insulated at all...

IIRC someone was making them by using an inflatable dome and shotcrete. Just inflate it, spray it with shotcrete then deflate once it had hardened. You should then be able to spray foam the inside.